Cell Phone Usage Among Kids in Japan

Here’s the story that caught my eye today…

“Students use mobile phones over an hour a day for e-mail, Net surfing” (Japan Times)

Point one:

• This headline is misleading because it includes elementary school kids. If you looked at the average times mentioned at the bottom, the average for junior and senior high kids is over two hours.

Comment two:

• If you strain to look at this in a not so negative light, you have to remember that these kids that are surfing the net and writing emails to each other on their cell phones are not spending that time in front of a computer so there’s kind of a time balance there.
• Sub-comment one:
  • These kids are doing all of this with their cell phones !
• Sub-comment two:
  • These kids are not learning how to do this on computers, thus yet another generation of Japanese kids with little real computer experience.
• Sub-comment three:
  • You can do virtually everything with your cell phone in Japan that people in other countries do with their computers including online auctions and shopping, buying movie tickets, being navigated by GPS, downloading videos and music, and much more!

Observation three:

• I think the real amount of time they use cell phones is higher if you include dead time (riding on the train, waiting for a friend, while watching tv) which I don’t believe these kids are counting into their two plus hours a day.l